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“Dance, dance, dance,” he told me over and over again. And every time I tried to balance like I once did, the hinderance without my big toes threw off my balance, and the pain was always and forever excruciating.
Dmitri’s knuckle catches the bottom of my chin so I’m forced to look up at him. “I told you; I always have someone watching. Even if that went to shit today.”
I watch as his guilt crushes him, and any amount of rage I might’ve held for him quickly sizzles out. We’d been through enough. Tearing him down for ultimately protecting me was wrong. I place my hand on his chin and graze my thumb over the stubble as I sigh, exhausted.
“How many people have you killed?” I ask quietly. Not so sure I want the answer. It’s scary to think that what was most likely once a sweet boy could be turned into a ruthless killer. Yet, high society thought he was one of the most distinguished men in New York. How wrong they were.
He kisses the inside of my palm but doesn’t look away. “Don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to. I don’t get a thrill out of it, though, if that’s what you’re asking. I simply remove obstacles if they arise.”
“Obstacles?” I quietly repeat.
“If anything threatens what is mine, then yes, the obstacle will be removed,” he says without an ounce of remorse. But why would he? This is who Dmitri is. I’ve known that from the moment he snapped Connor’s neck in my apartment.
He picks up strands of my ragged hair. “Do you want me to call in a hairdresser? They can probably salvage it for you?”
I sigh, twisting and picking up the scissors once again. “I’ve gone through worse than having to cut my hair, Dmitri. I just want this night to be done and anything she touched gone.” I could always have a hairdresser clean it up in the following days. And who knows, maybe the change will feel nice—liberating even.
I’ll most likely be reprimanded for it. Ordinarily, I wasn’t permitted to change anything about myself. And I was only allowed to trim my hair, no more than an inch. But I’ll be fucked if I was going to stare back at the constant reminder of being pinned against that dumpster, certain that tonight was the night I was going to die. Especially at the hands of a woman who twisted her own narrative to suit her antics.
I hover the scissors near my hair awkwardly, my hands shaking as I relive the experience. I try to push away the memory of having the blade to my throat. I try to compartmentalize it like all the other graphic threats I’d endured. But it was too fresh, too hard to push down as of right now.
“Pass them here,” Dmitri offers quietly. My eyebrows flick up in surprise as I’m brought back into the room, reminded that I’m not alone.
“You suddenly know how to cut hair?” I ask him as he walks out of the room. I wait for him, surprised when he brings in a chair from the dining table and places it in front of the mirror.
“Somewhat,” he muses as he steps behind me and looks at my hair’s length. “When I was younger, I learned from our housemaid, Katniss. My mother didn’t do well with strangers, so I used to cut her hair from time to time.” My heart swells at the way he speaks about his mother, especially when he used to keep her so close, rarely speaking about her. “I’m not offering anything special, and you’ll still have to get it professionally fixed up, but I sure as shit bet I can do a better job than you with the angle you were pointing those scissors at.”
I let out a small laugh, and the corner of his mouth kicks up in an arrogant smile. I know he feels guilty for this and wants to fix it, and so I decide to let him; I was also curious to watch this brute force of a man doing something so… gentle. I watch him through the mirror. The man is twice as wide as me, analyzing the angle and hair like if it was a serious array of colored wires strapped to a bomb.
“It sounds like you did a lot for your mother.” I push gently, wanting to hear and see more of this gentle side of him. His blue eyes look up through thick eyelashes.
“Not enough,” he says quietly before looking back to the task at hand. Snip. Half the length of my hair falls at my shoulders.
A nauseating twist of uncertainty fills my stomach. Both at the amount of hair gone and his insinuation that he hadn’t done enough for her. “What happened to her was not because of you either, Dmitri.”
“No, but the same thing’s happening to you right now, isn’t it?” he asks matter-of-factly and cuts again. “No matter how hard I try, I could never bring her back… whole. In fact, I don’t entirely remember what she looked or sounded like as a whole person.”
My heart breaks, and I can hear the distance in his tone. Did he think I would end up broken like her? Wasn’t I already? I realize then that it’s really not just for myself that I have to hold onto every part of me, but for him as well. I thought it was guilt alone that drove him to help me, but I realize now it’s just a repeat of his childhood. His greatest wounds reopened once again.
“I’m sure she’s an incredible woman,” I say, trying to shift the lump in my throat while watching as he cuts my hair. It’s just hair, and although I don’t care for its superficial means, I’ve had it for as long as I can remember. It’s different, but I’ll get used to it.
“She is. And so is my grandfather, who looked after us,” he says absentmindedly as he continues cutting. “Though we share the same irony that despite having more money and influence than we know what to do with, we still haven’t found anything to help her.”
This angry, violent man comes out only to protect what he cares deeply for, I realize. Nobody saw past his charming mask as the CEO of Creighton Technologies. Anyone daring to dig deeper they’d find that cold, calculated man who would stop at nothing to get what he wanted. And past that…
Is a boy wounded from his father’s tyranny.
A man willing to sacrifice himself.
Even for someone like me.
He’s looking at me now through the mirror, and I offer a gentle smile. “I love you, Dmitri.”
It takes him a moment to register what I’d just said. It’s the truth. I did, and always will. Despite everything I’d said to him before leaving college, I’d said it because I thought I was saving us both the burden of a tragic ending or more specifically, me being hurt from an unrequited love.
But had I seen this side of him? Had I known about his struggles, I would’ve fallen irrefutably and deeply. But perhaps neither of us was ready for that. Not then, anyway…
“You’ve been the only woman I have ever loved, Elanee.” He kisses the top of my head and comes to stand in front of me to rest his forehead against mine for a moment. I close my eyes, savoring the sense of his masculinity overwhelming me, protecting me, loving me, and simply being here with me now. It’s more than I could’ve asked for.
